


Red Right Ankle

by savagescribbles (timeandcelery)



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Angst, Childhood, Cuddling & Snuggling, Drabble Collection, Fluff, Friendship, Future Fic, Implied Child Abuse, Kissing, Muteness, Other, Pre-Canon, Sign Language, The Talk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-14
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-11 19:31:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 3,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/802364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeandcelery/pseuds/savagescribbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabbles and short fics, written for various prompts, challenges, and ideas over the last year or so and including, but not limited to: shipping, friendshipping, children, angst, sign language, kolee-dok-zumil, and Zeetha embarrassing everyone in sight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Certainty (Agatha/Gil)

**Author's Note:**

> Still the worst proposal ever.

“ _Well…_ ” Gil says. It’s clear from his voice that he knows exactly what he’d like to do, but is instead waiting for Agatha to make the decision. It’s frustrating—and, she has to admit, more than a little bit endearing.

“Gil.” He doesn’t answer, and Agatha plants her hands on her hips. “ _Gil_.”

He looks back at her, finally, his expression a bit sheepish. “Look, I never meant to—you  _know_ I only wanted you to—”

She smiles, and that shuts him up immediately—even more so when she reaches forward to hook a finger into the chain around his neck. She gives a tug and pulls, out of his shirt, the ring that until now she’s tactfully ignored. Gil’s eyes widen, but she merely turns it on the chain and remembers.  It seems like it’s been so much longer than it has, and yet here it is, and here it’s been all this time.

She lifts her face toward Gil, then, and finds him looking down at her, and there’s a warmth in his eyes that jolts her and sends a little thrill of happiness flooding down to the tips of her toes, leaving her light and breathless and so, so close. There’s a smile playing at his mouth—just for her, she thinks—and oh, it would be so easy to step forward and close the gap between them, to curl into his arms and just stay there.

So she lets go of the ring, letting it fall back against his chest, and he raises his eyebrows in an unspoken question to which she shakes her head. “No, still the worst proposal ever.”

Looking slightly abashed, Gil reaches up to run a hand awkwardly through his hair, and suddenly Agatha is overcome with another rush of affection for her daft, wonderful, idiotic boy, for Gil who always leaps before he looks and who still has that stupid pipe fitting on a chain around his neck all these months later.

They’ve had enough hesitation, enough wondering. All the evidence she needs is right in front of her, and so she steps forward until they’re chest to chest, his face inches from hers.

“Agatha?” he murmurs, his hand brushing down from her shoulder until it comes to rest just above her elbow. The touch is light, questioning almost, and as he looks uncertainly at her, she reaches up to press her palm against his cheek, and for a brief moment that seems to stretch on and on, they just stand there, so lost and so completely rooted.

“Do you…?” she hears herself say, and she doesn’t know how that sentence is supposed to end but she does know that Gil has given a single, fierce nod, that his hand has moved from her shoulder to her own cheek and that they’re both waiting,  waiting for something.  

And then suddenly that something, whatever it is, happens, and suddenly they’re kissing, desperate, eager, overcome, and Agatha can’t stop trying to pull him closer, always closer, her hands sliding from his face to his hair to bring him in as she opens her mouth to him. Gil obliges, just as lost in the kiss as she is, and when she finally breaks the kiss they’re both pink-faced and breathless and neither of them can quite keep from smiling, and when Gil tucks a stray strand of hair behind Agatha’s ear and goes back for another, softer kiss, she thinks she might melt.

And somehow, she doesn’t think she’d mind.


	2. Gravity (Agatha/Tarvek)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's torn his world from its orbit, his heart from his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Companion piece to Certainty, more or less.

She’s kissed him before, but never like this.

In fact, insofar as he can think with her so close, with her hands framing his face and with her mouth on his, he can’t remember  _anyone_  ever kissing him like this, with such purpose, such concentration, as if she’s  _searching_ for something with an intensity that will be his undoing, but he doesn’t know what she hopes to find on his lips that she can’t see on his face. 

He can’t think, but even with his mind so fuzzy and so full of her that he  _knows_ that whatever it is, when she finds it, she can have it — that she already has it.

He wonders vaguely if she knows that, but the thought escapes as she hums a little against his mouth and red fire, his brain is full to brimming with her, with the way she feels and the way she’s relaxed against him, nearly in his lap, and the weight of her pushing him into the chair and the way his heart still tries to escape from his chest around her.

And when she breaks the kiss and pulls back, he stares at her for a long moment, trying to remember how to do anything but spin helplessly in her orbit.

“Tarvek?” Agatha asks, and he doesn’t answer because how can he? He doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve her flushed and breathless with one hand still pressed against his cheek, doesn’t deserve the soft look in those wide green eyes. He doesn’t deserve it — he doesn’t deserve  _her._

But she seems to disagree, because she smiles and brushes her lips over his in a fleeting breath of a kiss before shifting to hold him, face turned against his neck, one arm looped around his shoulders. He wants her closer, wants to hold her for as long as she’ll let him, wants to bury his face in her hair and listen to her breathe. 

So he does exactly that, and for a long time, neither of them moves.


	3. Adhere to Me (Agatha & Zeetha)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You've come so far."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Futurefic, written when I was still foolish enough to think that Our Heroes might get time to nap and bathe and have a sandwich before fighting off more evil.

“Can I?” Zeetha asks, reaching out to touch her hair. Agatha nods and pulls her glasses off, and she tips her head forward as Zeetha settles behind her on the bed, lifting her hair back over her shoulders in one great red-gold mass.  
  
It’s still damp from the rain, clumped and tangled, full of grease and ichor and ash and blood that will take a week of washing to vanquish completely. But Zeetha fights the knots and the grime with equal spirit, knowing just how hard she can pull before it hurts too much.   
  
When the bigger knots are out she runs her fingers through it to work the small ones free. She moves to rub circles on Agatha’s scalp, mussing up the cowlick in back. “There you go,” she says when she’s finished, dropping her hands down to Agatha’s shoulders. “Do you want me to braid it?”  
  
She gives a tired little laugh. “And end up not being able to undo it without three people to help me?”  
  
Zeetha cuffs her shoulder. “Hey!”  
  
“It’s true!”   
  
“It is not.” She shifts, gets up, drops the comb on the nightstand.  
  
“Is.” Agatha swings her legs around and stretches out, yawning, and Zeetha watches in some amusement as she cocoons herself in every blanket on the bed.  
  
“Got enough blankets there?”  
  
“I think so.”  
  
“Okay,” says Zeetha, picking another one up off the chair. “This one’s mine.” She holds it up and looks questioningly over at the nose poking out of the Agatha-cocoon. “Unless you mind me staying?”  
  
“I’ll be fine alone.”  
  
“Who’ll threaten anyone who tries to wake you up, huh?”  
  
“…just don’t kill anyone we like,” says Agatha, and she shifts toward the edge to make room.  
  
Without warning, Zeetha vaults over her to the other side of the bed, sending them both bouncing. Agatha shrieks and pulls an arm out of the blankets to shove her, and they aren’t too tired to laugh at that.  
  
Zeetha puts an arm over her when they’ve stopped, hugging her through the mound of blankets. “You did amazing things out there, my zumil.”  
  
“I had help,” Agatha protests sleepily.  
  
“Amazing things,” she repeats, pressing her forehead against the side of Agatha’s face. “You’ve come so far.”  
  
Agatha rolls over to face her and smiles, even as her eyes threaten to droop shut. “So’ve you.”


	4. Lessons (Agatha & Zeetha)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for a kinkmeme prompt: "Zeetha gives Agatha the "Talk" as part of her training. Embarrassment/serious talk about relationships/advice ensues."

Agatha is almost done modifying last night's designs when Zeetha bursts into her wagon unannounced, carrying a stack of papers and looking cheerful.  
  
Too cheerful.   
  
Agatha turns around, and she glares, sort of. "If this is about warrior training--"  
  
"Nope!" says Zeetha brightly, leaning around her and stealing her pencil. "Well, not really." She sticks the pencil behind her own ear and, briefly, looks thoughtful. "Although, the kolee  _is_  responsible for her zumil's education and preparation in many ways, and this is one of them."  
  
"You're not going to hit me with sticks, though."  
  
"Nope."  
  
Agatha folds her arms and mock-glares some more.  
  
"Look!" says Zeetha, holding out the arm that isn't full of papers. "No sticks! No running either. You, my zumil, get to sit  _right there._ " Agatha quirks an eyebrow -- that grin is sidling its way back onto Zeetha's face. "It's about Lars."  
  
Agatha gives her a sidelong look and tries, and fails, not to blush.  
  
"A _ha_ ," says Zeetha, leaning forward and putting her hands on Agatha's shoulders. She grins. Too many teeth. "Well?"  
  
"...well, what?" asks Agatha, not sure that she really wants to know the answer.  
  
"Are you  _planning_  on anything?"  
  
"...what?"  
  
Zeetha rolls her eyes. "Oh, come on, 'what'? The way you two have been acting? The big gooey eyes you've been making at each other for weeks? The way he _blushes_?"

"I--" Agatha stammers.

"Are you going to sleep with him?"  
  
Agatha splutters and chokes, feeling her face turn hot and scarlet. "No! I mean, I'm not -- I don't -- we're not -- no!"   
  
"Well, if you don't want him, maybe Gilgamesh Wulfenbach will show back up, hey? You seemed pretty _interested_ when you were talking about him, and his _eyes_ , and his _smile_ , and how _tall_ and  _handsome_ he is, and how _smart,_  and how _strong_ , and how  _nice_ his hair smells. _._."

"Shut up, shut _up_!" Agatha flails wildly and hits Zeetha in the ribs. She doesn't seem to notice, or at least she doesn't care, because she pets Agatha's hair (and holds back a giggle or two).   
  
"Well, alright, but I wanted to make sure you knew what you were doing. If you were doing it. 'Cause you don't seem to know. Make sure you had maiden weed, 'cause any surprises would interfere with your training." Agatha gapes. Zeetha continues undeterred. "And that you understood the _mechanics_ , if you get my gist."  
  
"I know about that!" protests Agatha, feeling her face go even hotter and redder, which apparently was possible still. "I've read books!"  
  
Zeetha grins. There are a lot of teeth. "What kind of books?"  
  
"...textbooks."  
  
Zeetha badly hides a snicker, and whatever it was that she was holding hits the desk in front of her with a thump. "You can look at those if you'd like.  _Instructional._ " Agatha buries her head in her hands and decides not to look at them, ever. She can pretty much hear the unspoken  _cha-cha-cha!_  behind those words.   
  
She gets a few more moments of wanting to sink through the floor before Zeetha's hands end up back on her arms, gentler this time. "Really, though, Agatha." She knows when Zeetha is being sincere -- knows the shift in her voice and the way her brows crease and the gentle touch on her upper arms. "You are my zumil. Taking care of you is my duty. I want you to be safe. I want you to be  _happy_ , no matter what you choose. And I want you to know that this choice is entirely yours, and that there's no wrong answer to the way you feel, or for what you want, or don't want, to do about those feelings." She pauses and grins again, less shark and more mother bear. "Also that if anyone says otherwise, I'll stab them."  
  
"...Duly noted," says Agatha, and she starts to laugh.


	5. Bound By Symmetry (Agatha & Zeetha)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're both lost.

For once, the night is quiet. The rest of the circus has gone to sleep early, and outside, the rain hammers down on the metal roofs. Agatha, still aching from the morning’s practice (she’d been allowed wooden practice swords for the first time, which was rather less exciting and more painful than it sounded), is hunched over plans for one of the wagons and a list of improvements left for the silverodeon.

Behind her, Zeetha’s flopped dramatically over her bed. For a while she’s been strangely quiet, and eventually, she sits up and says, “Hey.”

Agatha’s in the middle of a particularly fiddly bit of her sketch and barely hears her.

“Heeeey.”

She finishes the locking mechanism for the front wheels, frowns, and gives up. “What?”

“You’ve been acting strange,” says Zeetha.

“Strange?”

“Do you miss it?”

“Miss what?” 

“Home,” says Zeetha flatly.

She doesn’t know what to say. This, coming from her…?

“…not like you do,” she finally settles on, pushing her sketches away and trying to avoid thinking about — not what that really means. 

“I didn’t mean like that.” Zeetha swings herself upward and onto her feet again, and she rests a hand on Agatha’s shoulder. “But you lost a lot.”

“I don’t ever want to go back.” And she doesn’t. Not now, not ever. But she digs her nails into her palm and hums and tries not to think about home, about Clay Mechanical, about Adam and Lilith and —

She does anyway, and there’s a sick lurching sensation as what von Pinn did to them flashes across her mind. She grabs the edge of the bench and shuts her eyes and tries to will away the memories of blood and the pain and promises. She hardly notices when Zeetha’s hand tightens on her arm, but when she turns and pulls her against her chest, it’s all she can do to bury her head in her shoulder and try to keep from sobbing.

“You’re okay, kiddo,” Zeetha says, smoothing a hand through her hair. “I’ve got you.


	6. Heart and Hand (Punch|Adam/Judy|Lilith)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He has no voice. He speaks anyway.

Beetleburg goes quiet early some nights, and this is one of them. By the time Punch comes in from the shop, though, it’s late — Agatha has been asleep for an hour, at least — and Judy stops chopping for tomorrow night’s stew when he does.

“We need to talk,” she says, draping a rag over Punch’s shoulder as he stoops at the sink to wash the grease off his hands.When he’s dried off, he turns around and nods at her to speak, his face growing worried as he reads her expression. His brows knit into a question, and he places one closed fist at the base of his throat.  
  
Judy shakes her head. “No, not that. It’s… Adam,” she says, out of enough habit that it’s stopped seeming wrong, “it’s three years next week.” She stops and hesitates, as if saying what she is about to will make her suspicions true, her beliefs real.  _“He’s not coming back_.”  
  
He drops his gaze to the table, shrugs and gestures downward.  _Probably not._ One fist closes, drops to the scrubbed wood of the table with a thump, and she can see the same dull grief that she feels in his signs. _He will try. If there is a way, he will try._  
  
“I know,” she says, and she does. “I’m just afraid that there might not be.” He nods, and she continues, “If…”  
  
They both know what that if means, and they both know that, whether with mouth or movement, it doesn’t need to be said. Instead, he reaches over and touches her shoulder, briefly, and gives her the faintest of smiles. She watches as his hands move —  _we will live_  — and then he looks back at her, with one closed fist opening over his chest, moving outward.  _He loves her. We love her. And—_  
  
She reaches out, moves her hand from her chest to his and rests it there.  _And I love you._

_We will live._


	7. Last Best Thing (Gil and Tarvek, age eight)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So you hold him, because you're eight years old and all you have is each other.  
> [WARNINGS: panic disorder, implied child abuse]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [STILL warnings for panic disorder and implied child abuse.]

He curls down to the floor, and you pull the blanket over from your bed to his. It’s what you do. You have a system. He has nightmares, and you tug the blankets over, and you both hide underneath with the pocket lantern you aren’t supposed to have until he can sleep again. You huddle together, and he’s still shaking. So you hold him, because you’re eight years old and all you have is each other.   
  
His heart is racing, pounding like it’s trying to escape. Like he’s trying to escape.  
  
You don’t know what his mind conjures up in the middle of the night, what there is inside his head that he is so afraid of. You do know that you haven’t seen anything outside of it that scares him so much.  
  
Something always stops you from asking what it is, though, and anyway, tonight seems to be worse than usual. By the dim orange light of the lantern, you can make out tear tracks on his face, and when you grab his hand, he pushes forward to bury his face in your shoulder. He bites back a sob, and he shakes.  
  
“You good?” you whisper after a while, even though you know the answer. It’s part of your system, too. He’s still trembling, and he shakes his head no against your shoulder.  
  
You turn the lantern off and push it back under the nightstand between your beds with one hand, because you know he doesn’t want you to let go. Then you help him to his feet, the blankets round his shoulders, and you climb after him into his bed and pull the rest of the blankets over you, and you listen as his breathing slows to normal.  
  
He’s awake when you drift off. When you wake up, though, he’s asleep and nearly still, curled into a tight little ball against your side. The rest of the dormitory is empty already — you’ll both be scolded for it.   
  
But as long as it’s both of you, you’ll be alright.


	8. In The Picture In Your Head (little Agatha and uncle Barry)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fathers and brothers and storytellers.

Eight o’clock comes and goes, and among his notes, Barry doesn’t notice. There are things he has to do; there are wrongs that it has fallen on him alone to right, and maybe, this time, he is onto something.

Maybe, this time, he won’t fail them.

But there are other pressing matters, too. Like the grumpy little face staring up at him from the doorway.

“What are you doing?” Agatha asks.  
  
“Nothing important.” He shuts the book in front of him and shoves it away for another time. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

She folds her arms and squints a bit. (She’ll need glasses one day, he thinks, just like her father.) “Yes,” she says.

“Then…” He breaks off and glances at the clock. “You want a story.”

“Yes.”

“Alright. What do you want a story about?”

Without waiting for him to move, she climbs onto the chair and squirms into his lap. “Tell me a story about your adventures with my papa,” she says.

So he thinks for a moment, and then he tells her the story (slightly embroidered, rather heavily edited) of the time that Bill had got them all trapped in the dungeons of a man who had wanted to take over the world with sentient cheese. When he finishes telling her about how they had only escaped by convincing their captor that they were not, in fact, wandering heroes, but members of a singing ensemble and subsequently being made to perform a song about the conquering virtues of cheese, she doesn’t giggle like he’d expected her to. Instead she screws up her face, as if she’s trying to make sense of something that doesn’t.

“If he knew that the man wanted to trap you, why did he say you should go in?”

“He thought it sounded exciting, if I remember right.”

“That doesn’t sound like a very smart thing to do.”

He laughs a little. “No, it wasn’t. Your papa… didn’t always think things through. But he was my brother, and that meant that I took care of him. He took care of me, too, in his own way. And we always had each other.”

There’s melancholy in it, but she doesn’t seem to notice. But she’s a child. She shouldn’t have to. Instead, she pauses for a moment, thinking again. “That sounds nice,” she says at last. ”I wish I had a brother.”

Five years might be too young to notice the distance in his voice when he talks about her father — it won’t be for long, he knows —  but it  _is_  old enough to hear the way his voice catches now. “…I do too, Agatha.”


	9. Scientific Observations (Agatha/Gil/Tarvek)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> OT3 cuddlepile. Written for the kinkmeme.

It is a scientific fact, confirmed by extensive and thorough testing, that Gil's shoulders are perfect for cuddling. Both Agatha and Tarvek are certain about this, and the complete agreement of two of the most powerful Sparks on the continent is no small matter indeed.

And while they may have made their discoveries independently, science is much more rewarding in a group setting. Clearly, this is the only reason they've ended up snuggled onto the threadbare sofa in Tarvek's lab. Scientific objectivity and all.

It may also be why Gil has wound up in the middle for once, but it does not provide sufficient data to explain why when Agatha tucks her head against Gil's chest, near enough to hear the beating of his heart, he cradles her closer, pressing his face into her hair. "Hi, love," he mumbles.

"Hello to you too," she says, tilting her face up toward him and resting a hand on his shoulder, her arm across his body. 

Gil kisses her forehead, wrapping both arms around her back. She sinks against his chest as he holds her, solid and warm and familiar, the circle of his arms the only place she wants to be. He smells like the lab, like metal and oil and smoke, and like him, and like home.

When he stirs, freeing an arm to wrap around Tarvek’s shoulders, she does too, draping an arm across him to find Tarvek's hand and pull him towards them both. He lets her move him, but he blinks at them both for a moment, the letter he'd been reading while propped against Gil's shoulder forgotten. Then Agatha leans in to kiss the tip of his nose. He goes slightly cross-eyed, and she giggles, reaching for his hand but not quite able to grab the paper from it. "Letters later."

“But--”

She kisses him again, this time on the mouth. “Letters later, love.”

“Oh, all _right._ ” He gives an overdramatic sigh and stretches to drop it on the table before leaning back in to press his forehead against hers. “Better, my lady?”

“Much.” She reaches for his hand again, lacing their fingers together, and he grins. “Was it even important?” 

“I doubt it,” says Gil. He aims a kiss at Tarvek’s cheek but catches him in mid-motion, mouth finding the side of his head and his ear again. Tarvek, in turn, leans his head against Gil’s shoulder, and when he does, Gil slips an arm behind and around him, the hand coming to rest at his waist.

“It was,” says Tarvek at last, but he shuts his eyes and doesn’t protest any more, sinking against Gil’s chest and squeezing Agatha’s hand. She squeezes back, and Gil nuzzles at Tarvek’s ear, and she hums a little, a happy familiar sound that she couldn’t stop even if she wanted to. “But not as important as this.”

Together, like this, quiet and calm and tangled up against each other, is warm and familiar and safe. Together, like this, they ground each other with hands twined with hands and arms around shoulders and with the slow calm beat of three different hearts. 

Together, like this, they are home.


End file.
